


I'd Do Anything for You (In the Dark)

by jeffersonhairpin



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Infidelity, Inspired by Music, M/M, Wasted Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25356904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffersonhairpin/pseuds/jeffersonhairpin
Summary: "He just wants one last taste of why he did this to himself, almost ruined himself… Just a future-memory, to always be able to see why he wasted so much time in hope, for this…"After years of cutting off potential futures in favour of secret nights hidden away with Oliver, Elio is finally done.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 26
Kudos: 66





	I'd Do Anything for You (In the Dark)

**Author's Note:**

> Similarly to [When I Was Older](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23854987), inspired by Frank Ocean's [Seigfried](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWgpBlz16-s) \- truly a masterpiece I've been sleeping on. 
> 
> Best felt if you listen to the song beforehand or during, I think. Helps with the imagery.

Usually by now Elio might have opened the big glass doors. Sat on the balcony. Lit a cigarette and watched the sun go down. 

Maybe opened the champagne if he burned the cigarette down to the end waiting.

Sometimes the bubbles are enough to excite his senses into feeling okay with the waiting – maybe he’ll just half-watch a movie or a documentary and drink nice champagne until Oliver can get away… 

But it just wouldn’t be enough tonight. It couldn’t. And the sun has set anyway.

It might never be enough again, and that’s the thought weighing him down, pinning him, on his side, to the bed. 

Oliver is never here when he says he’ll be.

His wife must say that all the time too, Elio imagines, but the thought doesn’t really make him feel anything for her.

Nothing he’s thought so far tonight has been able to move the propellers that stir feeling in his chest, to move the cogs that move thought forward in him…

The ice holding the champagne has probably melted anyway.

Everything in the room is painted deep purple with the light of a city he doesn’t know as well as he should by now because of this. If Oliver were here it might be beautiful, and truthfully it’s still beautiful now, but… 

It’s such a lonely beauty. It makes it so hard to ignore how _achingly_ lonely he feels when he pays attention to it… 

Elio never thought he’d feel this empty in love. 

But Oliver’s love just can’t fill him anymore. Not like this, he’s _starving…_

_Why hasn’t he noticed? Why hasn’t he found a way to let me go yet?_

_Is it because he doesn’t see it, because I come back to life when he’s around? Or does he know, and he just can’t bring himself to let me go, even as he watches me disappear?_

A part of Elio is happy in a sick way at the thought of Oliver _needing_ to keep him, even as his touch turns him to dust…

But mostly he’s still just lonely. 

Usually he wouldn’t be able to hear the city below. He’d have music playing, or have a tv in the background to drown out the sound out there; the sound of all of the things he could have been doing if he weren’t waiting for Oliver to escape his other life.

All the things he _should_ have been doing with the friends he would have made over his years at university, if he weren’t always waiting for Oliver to escape that other life…

Well. 

Elio knows that he’s the other life, really. Oliver is most himself with him, but it’s elsewhere that his life is lived…

He’s been able to think of himself as Oliver’s real life for years, to imagine that one day he might finally leave the others for his conscience or for peace of mind. He’s usually at least been able to find ways not to think about it at all...

But tonight.

It’s never going to happen, he admits to himself with heavy knowing. 

It was never going to happen. 

_How much time have I wasted in pretending,_ he wonders. _How many futures did I cut off to keep this? Should I have been finding a nice girl to buy a house in the suburbs with, like he did? A picket fence, two children – one boy and one girl?_

_Maybe just one little me, to correct all my mistakes through... Isn't that what most parents are doing, really?_

_I should have been out there either way,_ he thinks, staring achingly out at the glowing city with a mouth glued shut – staring with the kind of ache that never goes away because the past cannot be changed.

His mistakes are not tattooed not on his body, which he can cover up or look away from, but on his mind, which will never be out of sight.

_I never made friends the way I should have, I never went out with everyone else, I never sought out those youthful joys and regrets… Because I was too busy seeking out this one, enormous joy._

One enormous regret…

 _‘What a waste,’_ he recalls with no reaction but to curl up a little.

The arrangement used to feel special, romantic, clandestine… 

But now it just feels lonely.

Oliver gets to go home to his wife and his children, and what does Elio go home to? Not even his parents know, it’s put a wedge they don’t even _know_ about between them and, it was _enough_ at university, it _really_ was, it’s just… 

It’s never going to be enough again. 

Not after this silence. 

Not in this cold. 

He feels like a doll that Oliver just leaves and picks up when he’s ready – when no one is looking… 

He does so many beautiful, truthful things, but only when no one is _looking_. In the dark.

Elio is lying in truth now, in the violet dark, and the truth is that he doesn’t know if Oliver is late because his family is keeping him or if he’s late because he died on his way to the hotel.

_I’m never going to have the right to know where he is, or the right to know if something has happened to him if he doesn’t tell me… I have no ownership over his life, I’m just renting space there – all the money for it exchanged under the table where no one can see._

_I’m like a mouse, scurrying in and out of the holes in his home, following the trail of crumbs to the rooms he keeps his family away from…_

_He’s never going to be able to give me a key to the front door,_ Elio thinks. _Only the key to a cold hotel room with a view of the city and an expensive bottle of champagne waiting on ice…_

He’s eerily calm in his realisations – expressionless. Because he doesn’t have a choice to make. This is just something he has to do if he wants to live.

He’s going to die, if he doesn’t find a way to move his arms right now, and lift himself off of this bed. It's going to kill him.

He lies there for a few minutes more, on three separate occasions almost performing those life-saving actions, but always at the last second discovering that his arms and legs are no longer connected to his brain. 

His body is a still lake and he cannot disturb it.

Only his eyes and his ears are still online, showing him that beautiful city, so vivid, so _alive…_ Delivering to him the sound of the air-conditioning, cold in more ways than one…. Playing the noise of a city pregnant with young people running wild at night, becoming, like he never could…

He’s still young, but he’s getting older. 

He needs something that can _grow_ with him, and this can never grow. _He_ can never grow in this…

He’s set in his decision and yet he still hasn’t found the strength to move when he hears the lock turning in the door, and sees a pillar of white light dividing the purple room. 

“Elio?” he hears called, in a pensive, breathless voice.

He doesn’t answer.

The lights turn on and he closes his eyes against the sudden glare, curling up tighter and burying his face in his hands. 

“Turn off the lights,” he murmurs.

“What?”

“Turn off the lights.”

The room plunges into deep indigo shades again.

The sound of Oliver rushing over to the bed interrupts that still lake of near-silence Elio has been lying in for hours, but as he clears his view he doesn’t take his eyes off of the city.

“I’m so sorry Elio, I couldn’t get away until now.”

Usually he might tell him he didn’t want to hear his excuses, he just wanted to kiss him. Or he might ask what took so long in a small voice, or he might be drunk on the champagne by then and just want to be taken to bed, and taken roughly…

But tonight he just wants Oliver to hold him.

He doesn’t want to hear that Oliver loves him. He doesn’t want him to kiss him and beg him not to go…

He just wants one last little taste of it. 

He just wants one last taste of why he did this to himself, almost ruined himself… Just a future-memory, to always be able to see why he wasted so much time in hope, for this…

Elio hasn’t said anything for a long time, but Oliver seems to know what he needs as he wraps his arms around him, just like he always does.

Almost always.

After feeling the warmth of Oliver’s arms sinking into his bones, for what feels simultaneously like an eternity that he could get lost in and a _second_ ended far too soon, Elio takes a breath and licks his lips, preparing to speak.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he whispers, not turning to face the man at his back. His voice is quiet, but it’s even in his certainty.

Oliver breathes for a second in processing, but when he speaks it’s desperate, in denial.

“Elio, I’m so sorry… I would have called you, but I couldn’t get away.”

“You already said that,” Elio murmurs, disappointed.

“Elio, I…”

When he lifts his eyelids, he’s finally ready to leave his cocoon and just do what he needs to do.

He looks up at Oliver with tired, seeing eyes.

“I need you to leave her,” he says, already knowing what he’s going to hear in return.

“Elio—”

“I need you to leave her,” he says again plainly, giving a second chance though the second answer will be no different than the first.

Oliver sighs. 

“I can’t do that.”

“I know,” Elio accepts, looking away again. “…And you can’t keep asking me to do this.”

With no logical answer to the statement, only the truth of his feelings to present, Oliver releases him from his arms to see him properly and gives a desperate look.

“I love you,” he says like a plea, as though that could ever be enough like this.

“I know,” Elio acknowledges.

He’s cold again without the arms around him, as he speaks the damning truth. 

“…You just don’t love me enough,” he says in a calm, heavy voice, looking down and away from Oliver. 

“Elio, I love you more than any—”

“I know,” he repeats a third time, finally finding the strength he was looking for before, as he stands and collects the bag he never unpacked. 

He never even took off his shoes.

“Please don’t do this,” Oliver begs, standing and turning to face him. _“Please_ don’t make me live without you, I need more time.”

And Elio almost considers it. Almost.

It’s such a tempting prospect now that he’s arrived at the finishing moment, to just put it off a little longer, drag it out for another month… 

There are still so many things they could do together, even crippled like this…

But he turns. 

He looks back out that window again. He sees a world out of darkness even in the night, sees real people, _real_ potential, _real life…_

And Oliver can’t give that to him. 

Or, he could...

But he won’t.

He turns, and opens the door.

He holds it open and turns his face for just a moment as he speaks.

“Goodbye, Oliver.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if this actually sways anyone, but please leave me a comment if you enjoyed it ❤️


End file.
